A long-standing practice in book promotion is giveaways, particularly since book giveaways may help drum up reviews as well. You can conduct such giveaways in a simple fashion, asking people to leave a comment on a blog post or social network page in order to be entered.

If your writing features a richly detailed universe, full of names, places, and historical events, you may want to explore using a wiki to chronicle it. A wiki’s structure allows intricate details to be recorded in a way that both preserves it in an easy to locate fashion but also allows devoted fans to browse the longtime story of your work.

Reddit is a social bookmarking site, allowing its users to post URLs that they think other users will enjoy. Other users can comment on or otherwise discuss the links. It is organized in terms of interests, also known as subreddits.

Since I can’t tell why, for sure, a story was rejected, I keep submitting to places that meet my minimum requirements. When I run out of places, I put the story in a folder that’s labeled ‘stories I still believe in’ and I review it once in a while.

Is book publicity necessary? In my mind: yes. Do you need a publicist? It depends! I’ve long felt that authors are small business owners; what publicity means to an author is going to vary widely depending upon the resources available.

If you’re selling books on Amazon, you’ll want to set up your page in their Author Central program. Use your Author Central page to provide more information for your readers: upcoming events, a full listing of your books, pictures and videos, and even excerpts from your blog.

For writers who are interested in writing middle grade or young adult fantasy or science fiction, the first step is puzzling out what exactly those categories mean. Science fiction and fantasy, after all, has a long tradition of featuring young protagonists — including such classics as Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey, Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings, and Arrows of the Queen by Mercedes Lackey — even if those novels weren’t originally published as middle grade or young adult books.

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The young sorceress Larissa Noon believes that Andeer’s Goddess Queen, banished 500 years ago before the mad sphinx could destroy the world, is now cured and ready to return from limbo. Larissa’s the only one who believes this, though…

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M. Darusha Wehm

M. Darusha Wehm is from Canada, but currently lives on her sailboat in Wellington, New Zealand after spending the past several years living and sailing around the Pacific. She’s the author of five science fiction novels.

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